This is because content marketing is all about targeting a specific audience. For lawyers, that audience is old, current and potential clients. When drafting content for your firm, it needs to be designed and delivered with this demographic in mind.
The right content will make a lawyer and/or your firm overall appear reliable and professional. If a person is seeking your legal services, they will want to ensure that you are trustworthy and qualified to help them. Your brand must be visually appealing with a good marketing strategy, reassuring your clientele that you know what you’re doing.
A simple website on its own won’t achieve this. You need a broad content marketing strategy to increase your credibility as a lawyer. Thankfully, a good marketing strategy doesn’t have to be expensive, so you can build your brand without busting the budget. Here’s how to start.
1. SEO IS VITAL SO KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Research your target audience thoroughly. (Hint: It’s not “anyone seeking legal representation.”) One way to do this is by creating surveys for your existing clients, asking questions that will help you understand why they decided to come to you for legal aid.
Some sample questions include:
- What do you most want and need from your lawyer?
- How did you find our firm?
- Why did you decide to opt for our legal services over others?
Then, mine the answers for specific words to use in your content strategy. (Real-time analytics software can also help you make the most of data mining.) Those keywords can also inform your SEO practices by telling you what potential clients are looking for the most. Law firm SEO tools can help here, as well.
Keep track of the most potent terms for you, and then employ them widely in your content marketing strategy. That way, those seeking legal aid will be most likely to come across your legal organization first.
2. BE FAMILIAR WITH YOUR COMPETITION
Your competition are all the firms and corporate legal departments that have the same target audience in mind as you do. This involves being familiar with — and keeping track of — their content strategies.
For instance, look at their blogs, and see what content they produce. Check out their websites, and see what designs and pages they include. Is your own website missing anything that could help it improve?
Lastly, make the most of SEO tools to search competitor domains, and discover the keywords they rank for. The highest-ranking keywords for your competition are words you should include in your own content.
3. CREATE A DIVERSE CONTENT STRATEGY
The key is to engage your target audience as much as you can, and the best way to do this is by producing a good range of content. This could look like live or prerecorded videos, interviews, podcasts, presentations, social media posts, infographics, ebooks and so much more.
Experimenting with different kinds of content is the best way to find out what types most resonate with your particular audience. When you discover which are most successful, you can then focus on producing more of those.
4. REPURPOSE CONTENT
Content tends to lose its relevance after a while, regardless of how strong its presence was when you wrote it. You don’t want the impact of your SEO-informed writing to suffer as time passes. As a result, you have to repurpose your content frequently. It is one of the best ways to maintain your place on Google.
When looking to update your content, prioritize your best-performing posts and pages. Identify other topics you could include to expand existing content. Another tip is to simply turn a piece of content into another type of content, say from an article to a social media snippet or a video. That will save you time, ensuring that your content is fluid and relevant as time passes.
5. STICK TO A SCHEDULE
Quality content should always be your priority, but consistency is also important. Maintaining your online presence with regular posts is one of the best strategies you can employ, and there are several ways you can easily do this.
“There are plenty of law firms out there. A prospective client will immediately look elsewhere if you don’t ensure that you’ve made their experience on your website and elsewhere as smooth as possible.”
Establish a schedule to help you organize when and how your content is being uploaded online. There are plenty of tools to help you achieve this, including enabling you to publish preuploaded content at specific times during the week.
Set reminders for all the different areas of your content strategy; it is one of the most efficient ways to stay organized and ensure you are producing content consistently. Learning to manage your time as efficiently as possible will also help you successfully stick to a schedule.
6. HAVE A STRONG BRAND IDENTITY
Your brand identity is all about your legal organization’s core values, professional mission, backstory and the approaches you take with your clients. Take those values and stories and turn them into a full-fledged brand identity, whereby all of your content is centered around specific messages and values you want to share with your customers.
This ensures that your content evolves in a way that feels authoritative and trustworthy. After all, you are selling an experience, and your clients need to feel like they know what to expect if they choose your legal services.
7. OFFER TO WRITE GUEST POSTS
Writing guest posts is a great way to gain backlinks to your pages. This in turn helps you gain higher rankings on Google search results, leading to more traffic to your website. Reach out to websites and ask if they take guest posts. Many will even do so for free. Guest interviews are also another excellent backlink opportunity, so consider incorporating them into your strategy as well.
However, ensure you are picking professional websites to collaborate with. Spam-filled or poorly organized websites will only damage your credibility and fail to improve your SEO.
8. STRIVE FOR A SMOOTH USER EXPERIENCE
There are plenty of law firms out there. A prospective client will immediately look elsewhere if you don’t ensure that you’ve made their experience on your website and elsewhere as smooth as possible.
Make sure your website is intuitive and well designed. Your content should be labeled, easy to find and simple to navigate. For instance, if you have a series of
content videos, make sure they can all be found under the same subsection of your page — not scattered all over the place. Your contact details shouldn’t be hard to find either, as this could prevent someone from reaching out.
Ensure everything is correctly linked and your website offers easy access to your blog and social media pages — including your LinkedIn profile. Post customer reviews on your page, too, so prospective clients can quickly see that you are a reputable lawyer with a lot of experience.
As a legal organization, you’ll naturally have regular competition. Engaging and SEO-fueled content can considerably increase your chances of winning over clients. If you publish content consistently — and in various formats — you will ensure you are reaching wide audiences over multiple platforms.
